Mercy
by Renn Ireigh
Summary: Meeting David again shakes Rachel to the core. Immediately follows book 48.


_Disclaimer: _I own the combination of words, but not the source material.

_Timeline: _Smack-dab behind book 48. I am actually a bit upset that this issue was left open-ended- almost more upset that the ending was not really an ending at all- so of course I had to fix it.

**Mercy**

Renn Ireigh

Rachel locked her door and loosed her hair from the towel turban, leaving it loose on her shoulders to dry. And she hooked on her favorite bra (because she subscribed to the theory that there is no confidence boost quite like knowing you look drop-dead hot, even if your boyfriend is a bird) and she put on a little eyeliner and lip gloss (because you have to have standards even if your boyfriend is a bird, and it gave her hands something to do, and her brain something to think about.) She opened the window.

He never came at a specific time. Bad enough they knew that one of the Andalite bandits was a hawk; worse if they started noticing one flying into a house in the suburbs. But he always came, that was the important thing. They both felt the same after fights, that they needed some kind of validation, some proof that they were both still alive. That they'd lived- they'd _both_ lived- and the touch proved that any fears of each other's demise were just bad dreams.

This time it hadn't been the same kind of fight, and it had just been hers, but she knew he'd come anyway.

Rachel tried to do some homework while she waited, but quit trying after she forgot how to solve x2 -7x + 12 = 0. So she doodled in the margins, absent-minded, thinking deliberately of other things. Like next week's sale at H&M. Like the gymnastics meet in two weeks, the one her sister called the almost-big-one. She was careful to think only about normal teenage girl Earth things. Until she glanced down at her notebook and saw what she'd drawn. Rats. All rats, huge, lips curled back, except the one at the bottom whose stomach-

She shoved herself away from the desk and went to the window, breathing hard.

Calming down was hard. She loved the adrenaline rush to have worried too much about learning to suppress it, to settle her blood pressure and steady her breathing- and that was the problem, wasn't it, that she was hooked on the rush? It was why she loved the uneven bars- the thrill of letting go. Reality had gotten a little more thrilling than the uneven bars, and she wasn't sure where to reach out to catch on, how to anchor herself back into the world.

Your heart's going like a rabbit.

"What?" She hadn't seen Tobias approach. "Oh." She'd been blocking his flight through the window, and when she moved, he fluttered in to perch on the metal footboard of her bed.

You know. Like a rabbit. Fast. Though usually they only sound like that when they see me, and as far as I know I'm not in the habit of hunting you for dinner. So what's wrong?

She thought she should have spent some time preparing what she was going to say, because now that he was here, she had no idea where to start. Tobias was patient, settling himself on the bed rail while she adjusted her seat on the bed next to him.

"Tobias, how do you hunt?" she asked finally.

What?

"Not the mechanics. I mean, inside. Your brain and the hawk brain. How do you do it?"

Is this about whatever happened today that you won't talk about?

"I don't know how to talk about it yet. I'm still trying to figure it out."

And this will help?

"I think so."

Even so, he hesitated. It's… it used to be that I'd have to turn off my brain to do it. The boy brain, I mean. Let the hawk do it all himself. I guess you could say close my eyes and not look.

"Did that work?"

For the hawk. He ate, he was happy.

"But not you."

It takes a long time to come to terms with killing anything. At least it took me a long time. I mean, people get all their food from the supermarket. It comes in plastic. It's a long way away from the guts, you know?

She saw it again, the slick of blood, the intestines. By the time she wrenched herself away, he'd moved on. The boy brain says inconvenient things like 'That rabbit has babies and they'll starve.' Tobias was silent for a moment, as if remembering something. She waited. Eventually I realized, I'd starve too. And I had to take care of myself. People can get away with having someone else do their grocery shopping. I can't. But there's still a person inside here, and I feel like… I have to stay human, you know? Partway. So I kill fast, if I can. And I try not to kill anything with babies. But if it's that or nothing… I have to live too. I can't starve.

Rachel nodded slowly. "You compromise. Hawk and human. Do what the hawk needs, Within the human guidelines."

I guess. He paused, shifting on the bedframe. Does that answer your question?

She didn't answer right away, then asked another question. "The first time you killed something. The human brain… How did you get over that?"

I didn't for a while, he said. I just hid in my head for awhile. I thought… well, I thought lots of things.

"That you were a bad person?" she asked quietly.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, after that… I don't know. It helped that I did it for my own survival. And now it's just… it's what I do. So I have to accept that. No point trying to go against what's going to keep me alive.

Rachel nodded, but didn't reply. She hadn't been threatened. Well, she had, but not at the moment when she-

It hadn't kept her alive.

"Have you ever killed anything when you didn't need to?"

Tobias almost asked why she was asking, but her expression made him decide against it. I guess maybe. Could I have skipped a snack some days? Sure.

"I guess it's still pretty different for you," she murmured, so quietly that he wouldn't have heard if he had been human.

You want to tell me what this is all about?

No, not really.

But she'd asked him and he'd answered, and she'd asked him for a reason.

"Remember David?"

The rat?

"Yeah."

Yeah. I remember him.

Rachel took a deep breath. "I killed him today."

And she explained. About Crayak and the Drode. About the cage. About Cassie. About getting away.

About David begging her.

"So I did," she mumbled. "I morphed cat. Melissa's cat. I thought… I thought it would be easier. I could just hide in his head. And he'd know what to do. And he did, except… I forgot the thing about cats. Cats play with their food." She took a deep, shuddery breath. "When I came out of his head to see if it was all over, it… wasn't." She fell silent, seeing it again, the blood under him and on him and on her paws, the intestines and bits of fur and flesh stuck on her claws, the way the bare bone and tendon looked. The rat, barely alive, terrified.

"I had to do it myself. I couldn't leave the cat's mind to take care of it. I had to do it myself."

So you did.

She couldn't tell what he was thinking. "Yeah."

Because he asked you to.

"Yeah, but Tobias, does that make it _right_?"

He laughed bitterly. That's the question, isn't it?

"If it were a fight it would have been okay. In a fight you go in trying not to die, and it's either you or them. If it were one on one, him or me, it would have been different."

But he didn't fight back.

"No. It was like the fight was out of him."

So the question you're asking is, 'Was it okay?'

"No, I know the answer to that one," she said grimly. "It wasn't, not the way I did it."

Set that aside for a minute. It doesn't seem like the method is what you're beating yourself up over. Well, it's not the immediate cause, anyway.

"He asked me, sure, but did I have any right to make that decision?" She looked away. "_He_ did. At any point in the last however long it's been, he could have jumped in the ocean and drowned himself. He could have done it himself. It wasn't my call to make."

Why did you decide to do it?

"Because he asked." She swallowed. "I thought… we played god once, you know? So maybe it was my responsibility. Maybe I owed him that."

So you did as he asked you to do because you'd made yourself responsible for his life.

Rachel laughed, a bitter sound. "You make it sound so rational and so easy and so well justified. I just killed somebody who wasn't fighting back. How can I justify that?"

It sounds like you're trying to.

"I don't know if I should. I mean, we really screwed up this guy's life, Tobias. Granted he was a real jerk, but his parents got taken away from him, we took him out of his home, we stuck him in danger without really giving him any choice, we got mad when he didn't like it and tried to even his own odds, and then we got him stuck as a rat and effectively abandoned him to die. But he didn't die then, and then he begged me to kill him. So I did, slowly and painfully. How can I justify that?"

To her surprise, her eyes were damp.

I don't know, Tobias said quietly. I don't know that there's a right answer. There are lots of ways to rationalize it. In some ways I feel like I understand the guy, you know? He could have been me.

"Too much of a jerk," Rachel muttered.

No, look, some people who never make friends are just lonely. Other people who never make friends drive people away so they can say 'It was my choice. I did it because I wanted to.' It gives them control over it, you know? And I think David was probably that kind, since he couldn't do anything about his parents moving all over the place. So he was just trying to find something he could do for himself.

"You're a regular psychologist."

I've had time to think about it. Anyway, look, suddenly he doesn't have any choices anymore. He's a rat on a desert island. And then Crayak manipulates him.

"So you're saying…"

I think maybe he felt like he was out of choices, and then you appeared. And you were his choice.

"He had another one if he wanted to die! He could have gone straight into the ocean. He didn't need to make it my problem."

Suicide by drowning or suicide by Rachel. It's not much of a choice, but if I were ticked at you, I'd pick suicide by Rachel just to make you have this exact conversation with yourself. Plus I'd know it would work. When you start something, you finish it. You wouldn't let me down.

She'd think about that later. "So you think it was halfway because he wanted to have power over his own life and halfway because he wanted to make me squirm after the fact?"

Power over himself, power over you. That's what it seems like to me anyhow.

Rachel thrust herself to her feet and paced the rug in front of her bed. "That's not fair. That's _not_ fair. He put me in a shitty position just because-"

Tobias raised his wings as he would have raised a hand. But think about why _you_ did it. Leave him aside.

She flopped back down on her bed, head towards him. "It seemed… this is awful, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I'd already made myself responsible for him. I got him stuck as a rat. It felt like…"

She paused for so long that Tobias prompted, Like what?

"Like I owed him that," she said quietly. "I owed him the chance to die at an enemy's hand rather than his own. Because it's what I want if I were in his shoes. A fighter's death, you know? "

So he had his reason to ask you, and that was your reason to do it.

"Doesn't mean it was right."

Why is it different from any other time you've had to kill?

Her laugh felt hollow. "Well, in the first place, I didn't _have_ to kill him."

You just said you felt a moral obligation.

"I'm pretty sure that's not exactly what I said."

You said he asked you to kill him and, long story short, something you helped to do made him want to die, so his life was your responsibility. And you thought that you killing him was a better way to die than him killing himself, because it's what you'd have wanted in his shoes. And you were allowed to make that call, because he asked you to do it.

"I don't see any morality or any obligation."

Why did he want to die?

"Because living was worse."

And you don't see any morality in that?

"You can't possibly tell me you're comparing this to euthanasia."

You know, I wasn't originally, but now that you mention it…

"Seriously?"

Putting him out of his misery?

"Misery I put him into?"

What are you looking for here, Rachel?

"What do you mean?"

Just that, he said. Are you trying to rationalize it, or feel better about it, or feel worse about it? Or are you looking for some kind of absolution?

"I don't know," she started to say, then reconsidered. "I think I just want to talk about it. To understand."

Tobias fluttered on his perch, rebalancing. To understand him, or the situation, or yourself?

Rachel was silent for a moment, then said, "I think myself. And how I could do it."

He made a sharp gesture with his head that was almost like a nod. You've killed before, he said again. What makes this one different?

For a moment he thought she wasn't going to answer, but then he saw the tears in her eyes. "He didn't fight back," she said quietly. "Even when the cat was- when _I_ was torturing him. He never fought back. It isn't right, killing when- when I'm not in danger. That takes it from self-defense or warfare to outright murder." She paused. "I never- I know I'm ruthless in a fight, but I never thought of myself as a murderer."

Tobias didn't respond for a minute, and Rachel closed her eyes against the tears, but she knew it would be a losing battle so she cut herself off, and just said it. "Maybe I should have thought of that before."

Because you've killed before?

"Because-" She swallowed hard. "Because of how I feel in a fight."

I enjoy hunting, he confessed. Does that mean I'm a murderer?

"You do what you have to do to stay alive."

So do you, in battle.

"In a fight, we're defending ourselves against a threat. You're trying not to starve to death. Hunting so you don't die doesn't make you a killer."

Sometimes I wonder, he muttered, then back-tracked. Would you have felt differently if he had been wounded past healing- say, in a fight- and asked you to kill him?

The question surprised her. "I think that _would_ have been mercy," she said slowly. "I don't know. It's what I'd want someone to do for me."

The thing is, Rachel, I think he _was_ wounded in a way- past healing. Not physically, but emotionally, in his head. He got dealt a shitty hand and dealt with people in a broken way, and then, after he got stuck as a rat- which we orchestrated out of actual self-defense when he was trying to kill us, let's not forget that- then he broke all the way. He was never going to get the help he needed. He knew that, we knew that. He was broken and he was desperate and he asked you to kill him.

"You phrase it like it was all mercy."

I wasn't there, so I don't know. But I think there was an element of mercy to it.

"I didn't do it mercifully."

You saw it as murder, and you're not really a killer. You're one hell of a fighter, but I've never seen you kill anything just because you _wanted_ to. I saw him do that, so I know what it looks like, and I've never seen you do that. So you tried to- you tried to get away from that.

She laughed, a grim sound. "Yeah. So I tortured him instead."

Something occurred to him. Rachel, he said, What happened when you looked out from inside the cat and realized what you were doing?

Rachel hesitated, then said, determinedly: "I bit his head off."

A human would have recoiled, but Tobias wasn't a boy. He was a hawk, and he knew how to kill. So when it was Rachel in charge, instead of the cat, you killed quickly and cleanly.

"But the cat-"

You tried to avoid committing murder and it didn't work. Should you have done that? Debatable, but I'd be a hypocrite if I said I didn't understand why, because that's exactly what I did. _Thou shalt not kill,_ right? It's in the Ten Commandments, you grew up with that, and you wanted to live up to that. So you tried to make it so it wasn't _you_ doing it. But then when you realized what the cat was doing, you were- humane, I guess is the word.

Rachel was quiet, obviously chewing on what she was about to say. "Do you really think that?" she said finally.

I do. Yes, you killed him, and the _means_ were ugly. But once you decided to do it, you tried to do it with humanity. First you tried to preserve yours, and then for him, by killing cleanly once your human brain was in charge.

"I still tor-"

He cut her off. Yeah, you did. Marco'd say he had it coming to him. And the next time you have to mercy-kill someone, you'll know. But you know that _I_ know why you tried to let the cat take care of it. Because you're right. It's ugly and scary and awful to kill something that isn't fighting back. It's easier to let the human brain hide away. That's why you're talking to me instead of Cassie, isn't it? Because I get it.

"I couldn't have this discussion with Cassie. She'd be too horrified."

Not for the first time, Tobias wondered what the war would cost Rachel's relationship with her best friend; for the first time, he realized that Cassie and Rachel already might not be best friends anymore. He tried for the charitable approach. Cassie was raised to heal, not to harm.

"And Cassie wouldn't have killed him anyway, if she'd been in my shoes. We know that because she wasn't in favor in the first place. Besides, that's what I'm for." She made a sound that might have been a bitter and cynical snicker. "You know, there was a rat in the house this morning, and my mom freaked out and called me to come deal with it. Even my own mother calls me to kill things."

Should have just called me. I make a pretty good mousetrap.

"Yeah, I just put it outside. It wasn't doing anything to me, and it didn't ask me to do anything to it. You can have it for a snack if you find it."

The hawk- the part of the hawk that was learning to understand the things the boy and the girl said, and starting to wonder about the things the boy and the girl did- felt like he'd finally found something in the conversation he thought interesting, and that made Tobias think. Rachel, he said, Why'd you pick the cat? Why not a raptor?

Rachel hesitated. She could have lied. She considered it: "It was the first morph that occurred to me." But this was too important to lie about, and he was too important to lie to.

Is it a hard question?

"Mostly a hard answer," she said slowly. "The truth is that I thought about it. And then I thought, 'Is this what I want to use this body for?' Because- I don't know if I ever want to morph cat again. And I think I knew then that I wouldn't. So I didn't want to- to tarnish a morph that way." She took a deep breath. "And I didn't it want it to affect the way I see you. I know you hunt to live. I'm not squeamish about that- not about knowing it, not about watching it. But if _I_ killed someone in that shape, and not for the same reasons you have to… I don't know if I'm explaining this well. It actually has nothing to do with you, but I was afraid I'd link it with you somehow."

Because even though the reason wasn't the same, the action was the same.

"Yeah." She hurried to add, "I don't want you to think that it bothers me that you hunt because this is not about that."

Rachel, the last time we hung out in my meadow, I was eating a rabbit and you offered me a wet wipe. I think I'm over that particular hang-up at this point. He said it so dryly that she had to laugh.

"Three cheers to normalcy."

What's normal about offering a bird a wet wipe?

"The new normal, anyway," she amended, still smiling a little.

He just looked at her for a moment, and she felt like his raptor eyes didn't miss anything. Feeling better?

Rachel shrugged. "I think 'better' is going to take awhile, but I think I can sleep with myself tonight, anyway." She paused. "Thank you," she said, seriously. "I don't know how you do it- maybe it's because you've already done it with yourself, and if that's the case, I wish I'd been there for you at the time. But you always know how to- to walk me through stuff like this. To keep me human. I think I'd be a monster if you weren't here to talk me down."

I don't believe that. He shuffled on his perch on the end of her bed.

"I do. You bring out the best in me. Give me a reason to fight off being the worst."

Now you're going to get melancholy again, he warned.

She smiled. "I'm not. Promise." She ruffled his crest feathers and he turned his head into her palm.

He knew her better than that. Come on. Window's open. Time's wasting. I know that look on your face, and we're going flying.

"Isn't it too dark?"

No, he said, although it was darker than he'd like. Your mom think you're asleep?

"Probably," she said. "Door's locked, anyway." She turned off the light, just in case, and then stripped off her loose pajama bottoms and camisole, not minding the hawk eyes drinking her body in.

Then the eagle perched on the bed rail beside him. Ready?

Ready.

A hawk and an eagle flying at night, she commented, launching herself from the open window. We are one strange pair.

Eh, Tobias said non-committally, eyes even now seeing prey in the grass below- small, furry, long-tailed. I don't know that we're not two of a kind.

Rachel stretched her wings and thought he was probably right.


End file.
